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Thursday, March 5, 2020 | Vo l u m e 1 2 4 | I s s u e 4 8
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Grad students protest for better wages and work schedules
By Alyssa Martinez @amart4447 SMITH PLAZA — Nearly a dozen graduate employees convened on March 2 in solidarity with the 74 University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) graduate employees that were effectively terminated over the weekend after a months-long strike. UCSC teaching assistants refused to submit final grades as leverage for a cost of living pay adjustment. After denying the university’s ultimatum, the striking graduates were either fired or had contracts unrenewed for the spring leaving many undergraduate classes vacant, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “It’s ridiculous to expect graduate workers in California to live off of $18,000 per year,” said Emma Mincks, a graduate student in the English department and employee at the University of New Mexico. “They just can’t live off of that in California when your rent is $1,800 to $3,000 a month.” For graduate students here in the high desert, the grievances of their coastal colleagues hit close to home. Axel Gonzalez, an Ameri-
UNM reps push census turnout By Lissa Knudsen & Alex McCausland @lissaknudsen @alexkmccausland
Alyssa Martinez / @amart4447 / Daily Lobo
UNM graduate school students singing “Solidarity Forever” in front of University House on March 2 to show support for University of California, Santa Cruz graduate workers.
can Studies department graduate student and UNM employee, spoke at the rally. Gonzalez said although the situation at UNM
isn’t identical, graduate students across the nation face a familiar work model — graduates teach and grade the bulk of classes for a
bare minimum stipend. Although some departments pay more, most graduate students are
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Grad page 2
Differential tuition strains grad students By Justin Garcia @Just516garc SCHOLES HALL — While over half a dozen graduate programs at the University of New Mexico have adopted program-specific tuition increases, the masters of public health program in the College of Population Health won’t — at least for this semester. Graduate students Gabriel Gaarden and Alden Reviere made sure of it. The students said they were invited to meetings about the College of Population Health’s proposed $150 per credit hour tuition increase but said the administration failed to consider masters programs students’ concerns about the increase. “That information sharing has been too limited and has come too late,” Gaarden read from a prepared statement. Gaarden and Reviere spoke against the tuition increase during two Board of Regents committee meetings on Monday. During public comment in the first meeting, the two masters of public health graduate students killed differential tuition for their program. Their dean, Dr. Tracie Collins, withdrew the differential tuition proposal after Gaarden and Reviere’s opposition. But, for many other colleges and programs across campus, differential tuition is the new normal. Typically, a university will charge students the same tuition rates whether they are engineering or education students. Differential tuition, sometimes called tiered tuition, charges students different tuition rates based on their major or academic college — in some cases, both. Differential tuition has seen something of a domino effect at UNM. Over the last six years, nine programs and colleges used the controver-
Makayla Grijalva / @MakaylaEliboria / Daily Lobo
sial technique to boost dollars for themselves at a University in a budget crunch. One of the early adopters was the Anderson School of Management. Anderson embraced a differential rate in 2015. At first, the increase raised all Anderson students’ tuition by $10 per credit hour. Per UNM policy, a department seeking differential tuition is required to fill out a questionnaire and eventually get approval from UNM’s governing board. Some of the questions they have to answer include: Why they want the additional money, what they’ll do with the new cash, what similar schools do differential rates and what students think about the upcharge. Anderson’s Interim Dean Shawn Berman said
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the expected $540,000 extra per semester from differential tuition would be used to hire more faculty. Berman said in the questionnaire students were told about the price hike through “the advisement process” and via a letter. Berman also said in the questionnaire students could learn about differential tuition on the Bursar’s website. The Regents approved Anderson’s differential request in 2015. In 2017, Anderson proposed another differential, this one levied exclusively on graduate students. It amounted to an additional $183.70 per credit hour. Anderson expected this fee to generate $1.73 million per semester. For context, there were 651 graduate students
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SMITH PLAZA — Beginning March 12, homes across the country will start receiving invitations to complete the 2020 census, and University representatives are working to ensure everyone in the state is counted. A small group of impassioned advocates, students, professors and government representatives gathered at Smith Plaza on March 4 for a press conference designed to encourage New Mexico residents to participate in the 2020 census. Cathryn McGill, appointed by Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and the Bernalillo County Commission to chair the Albuquerque/ Bernalillo Complete Count Committee, spoke at the gathering and emphasized that the financial return on the individual time investment would be well worth it for the state. “Nine questions. Ten minutes to complete. Millions (of dollars) for your community — you do the math,” McGill said. “We want to be leaders in transportation infrastructure, in affordable housing, in early childhood education and food and wage security, and improving our response to the 2020 census is the best way to make New Mexico better.” According to census outreach group NM Counts 2020, “a mere 1% undercount of New Mexico’s population in 2020 would result in a $780 million loss of federal funds over a 10-year period.” Robert Rhatigan, interim director of the University of New Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies and the state’s demographer, also emphasized how critical getting everyone to participate in the census is for New Mexico. “Census responses are used to determine political representation in Congress, in the state legislature, in county commissions and in city councils,” Rhatigan said. He emphasized that no one should be afraid to participate. “I want to remind everyone how safe, important and easy the census is,” Rhatigan said. “There is no citizenship question on the census and ... every census response is protected under federal law and cannot be shared with ICE, with the FBI or the CIA.” Rhatigan appealed for students to engage with people in their communities who may need help completing the decennial population count.
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